


untitled

by buries



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Gen, Minor Character Death, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-01
Updated: 2013-04-01
Packaged: 2017-12-07 03:20:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/743596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buries/pseuds/buries
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>father dies, and, perhaps, with him, so does a part of gwen.</i> or the one where that episode should've been about gwen's grief, not morgana's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	untitled

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this back in 2009 and never really published it, and subsequently forgot about it. it's an au of 1x12. i never quite liked it how gwen's father's death was made to be about morgana's grief (who i love, regardless, but this was not _her_ episode) rather than letting us see gwen cope with losing her only piece of family.

When she is young, too young to think the world is more than black and white, father shows her a dress. It is lavender, light, like the wind, and her father’s smile is bright like the sun as he presents this to her. It feels like her future is sewn between the threads of this dress as her father’s smile, the brightest she’s seen him smile in days, promises her something she does not understand at this age and won’t understand when she is older.

Instead of focusing on the dress, like many little girls would, she looks at her father’s smile and sees something truthful to the creases at the corners of his mouth. He is looking at her expectantly, eyes wide, lines of happiness marking his face and overshadowing the hard labour’s permanent features on his youthful face. She looks at the dress and does not see a peasant. It is fit for royalty, lavender being the sister of regal purple to Gwen. It is what her mother would’ve said, her father tells her sometimes, and it has become a saying for Gwen, a place where she supposes her father expects her to find peace and a connection to her faceless mother. 

Gwen says this, her mother’s saying, and father laughs. “It is fit for a queen, perhaps,” he says, his wife in mind, and his fingers fold the dress with tenderness she has never seen before, never thought existed in a man who handles sharp angles and blades. “This was your mother’s,” he says, his face settling down to smoothen out, all the crevices in his face now co-exist together. His mouth is not as tight as it used to be, Gwen observes, whenever he mentions Mother. Perhaps it is getting easier for him to speak of her when she is present. She is a ghost, moves like the wind, is as light as the lavender, is so present in Gwen’s young face that sometimes she sees her father flinch. 

Later, when the dress is hung up in the cleanest part of the house, hidden from view, her father will say over dinner, “When you are older, this will be yours.” He does not specify that he’s talking about her mother’s dress as the candle flickers with the breeze as it pushes its way through the house and seems to take away her voice, her words, her only weapon that seems to separate her from the other little peasant girls. Gwen does not thank him, for this is too much, nor does she say anything, for she promises herself she will not take this away from her father.

*

Father does not ask why she does not wear her mother’s lavender dress instead of the warm colours of red and orange that she’s had since she was younger. Instead, he buys her lavender things, as if he is building up to the dress, as if he’s building up his own strength to depart with his wife’s ghost.

*

She insists on staying with her father in his prison, but is denied. She is a servant; a denial is always the answer for her kind. Morgana offers her a bed as well as Gaius and Merlin, so she is close to her father, so she is near, so she can sleep knowing he is in the same house. It is not the same as their home; the light is different and the distance between them is so prominent it makes Gwen want to run away to the nearest kingdom.

She is walking across the courtyard of the castle, the night blanketing Camelot in a dark blue. Gwen walks slow, her hands by her sides, as she hears her footsteps tap softly against the stones as if whispering secrets to any creature that listens carefully enough. She will regret this thought as soon as it comes true, as a bell rings high and guards follow orders to persecute an innocent man.

As the last sword pierces her father, Gwen is blanketed in chills. It does not last long, not even a fraction of a second. It is quick, like a blink, and passes like water across her skin, leaving small remnants in the form of goosebumps and the hairs of her arms standing straight up, as if pointing her attention to the sky. It leaves her feeling as though she is floating, as though she has grown wings and can fly. Gwen feels a gaze upon her, and she looks up at the windows of the castle to witness every window shut. Drawn, closed, cold. 

Gwen does not sleep that night. She returns to Gaius’ small part of the kingdom and takes the sleeping quarters, albeit reluctantly, but does not rest in the bed. She sits by the window, and, instead of falling asleep, she watches the sky.

*

Much later:

Arthur says, “Anything you want, anything you need, all you have to do is ask.” What Gwen wants Arthur cannot grant without the insistence of magic.

*

That first night alone, in the house, she does not cry. Gwen does not sleep. She finds her mother's lavender dress and slowly exchanges the warm colours of the sun for the cool chill of the lavender blues. Somewhere, she hopes, her father is smiling.

*

Morgana's wrists are bruised and bloodied. “It does not matter, Gwen,” Morgana will try to smile, try to laugh, but Gwen sees right through her, has always, and what she sees at the end of Morgana is a spine, so thick and invulnerable, her throat aches with envy. What she sees within Morgana is a light she has not seen since her father was taken, not within Merlin, not within Gaius, not even within Prince Arthur. “Leave it be, my wrists do not sting. It's barely a scratch.”

“He chained you, my lady,” Gwen runs a light finger over the mark, and Morgana winces. She looks at her as if to say _see_?

“Gwen,” Morgana's fingers wrap around Gwen’s wrist to still her, “he was your father. He did not deserve to die. Not for this.”

“Nor did you deserve this.”

“It is not the same,” Morgana says, and what she doesn't is _I have my life_.

Gwen resists asking _isn’t it_? “It does not matter,” Gwen pulls Morgana to sit. “You have these because of me. At least let me take care of them, you will ruin your dress if you try to,” she laughs, broken and uneven, and Morgana mirrors it, as if to comfort her, which all it does is continue to snap her in half. She sits on her bed and gives in with a sigh.

Gwen takes care of Morgana knowing Morgana is taking care of her.

*

“Merlin says you have a request, Guinevere,” Arthur says, and there is no ‘prattishness’ in his tone, nothing. His eyebrow is slightly cocked and he’s waiting, patiently, for her response. Merlin has ants running over his skin as he fiddles, mouth pulling at all angles, cheeks poking out, feet tap, tap, tapping. Arthur does not notice, and this unnerves Gwen, her confidence fading. She grips her lavender skirt.

“I would like to know how to use a sword properly, sire,” Gwen wants to look down, at her feet, as if to remind herself of where she belongs, but she keeps her head high, hears her father’s voice tell her to. She swallows, and the sound succumbs the room. “I am alone now, and I would like to feel safe,” she explains, despite the knights of Camelot, despite the men’s advantageous strength, despite – the truth behind her statement, and she will not admit to this, not even to Morgana, not even to Merlin as he pokes and prods for a real reason behind her desire to defend, is that when the monsters come, the true monsters that lurk within the cracks and the depths of shadows, Gwen wants to know she can defend herself, save herself, from fates like her father’s. The undeserving fates do not belong to people misguided, who are punished by a blind and deaf king. This is the only time Gwen will use her father’s death as a guilt-trip, for it is necessary, and he will forgive her.

“You are the best swordsman, Arthur,” Merlin chimes in, sending a wink her way, as if they are in cohorts with each other. Arthur rolls his eyes at Merlin. “I mean, what happened to her father ...” Merlin trails off, and Gwen feels a little better that _she_ is not the one using her father’s death as a guilt-trip into helping her defend herself because of the situation caused by the hands of a Pendragon. Arthur feels guilt for the actions of Uther and playing on this is inhumane, she believes, but persecuting men for giving a sorcerer a bed to sleep without the actual knowledge of his magic being is wrong as well. What is worse, Gwen wonders; taking the pity and confusion of a prince and using it to her own benefit or allowing herself to be weak when she needs to defend herself from claims of her helping someone who is magic? 

She is the blacksmith’s daughter; she has a promise to her father’s business to uphold. History can – and always will – repeat itself. “What do you say, Arthur?” Merlin says in the silence, thin eyebrow cocked. She feels guilty, however, because she is Gwen, and she can hear her father’s disapproving ticks of his tongue. 

“All right,” Arthur says a little roughly, perhaps to shut up Merlin, and he looks at her, blue eyes softening to comfort and pity, “All right. I’ll – I’ll try. I cannot promise anything, Guinevere.” Gwen tries to pinpoint where the differences between Arthur and Uther begin and where they end, joining up to follow along the same path before diverting again.

“Thank you, sire.” What she will know, much later, is that Arthur Pendragon keeps his word. This is the first point she discovers.

*

“Morgana cares for you,” Arthur says after their lesson. “She does not like what we are doing.”

“It does not matter what she likes,” Gwen says, and it sounds harsh to her, even to Arthur as his eyebrow shoots up like a star her father once saw with her mother. “I – I didn’t mean for it to come out as it did,” she shakes her head and starts to backtrack, “what I mean is that Morgana can like it or not, sire. I need this.” _To move on_ , she does not state, because Arthur, at this point in time, does not deserve answers to the questions he has been asking.

Arthur nods, “I understand,” and Gwen believes him.

*

When Arthur kisses her, she laughs. “Is something funny? Are you ticklish?”

“Of course not,” she says, to the first, for the second she is very. “It’s just –” she runs her fingers over her lips before she laughs again, “it’s just something my father once said.”

His face softens, “What was that?”

She shrugs, a smile tugging at one corner of her mouth, “If I told you,” she picks up her sword and positions her legs, “I would have to kill you.”

Arthur laughs, picking up his own sword to clang with her own.

*

What she will discover, much later, when the world’s chess pieces have changed and morphed, is that the true monster lurking within the shadows is Uther Pendragon.


End file.
